EDITORIAL: Not everyone can catch their fish dinner

The commercial fishing industry is booming in Port Washington and other Lake Michigan port cities.

No, not that commercial fishing industry, the one with nets and fish tugs and catches sold to markets and restaurants. It’s the other fishing industry, the one built around sport fishing, that is fueling commerce in Wisconsin and especially communities on the Lake Michigan shore.

Economic activity generated by recreational fishing statewide is estimated at more than $2.3 billion per year. Port Washington and nearby communities claim a share of that spending thanks to the allure of angling for the game fish that populate the lake in vast numbers.

Anglers travel to Ozaukee County to fish from charter boats, making the fleet berthed in the Port Washington harbor an important local business in its own right. Others bring their own offshore fishing boats. Some visit the area just to fish from shore. They all contribute in one way or another to local economies, at hotels, airbnbs, restaurants, bars and shops.

This economic benefit stems from the rebirth of Lake Michigan as a sport fishing destination after its native fish species were decimated by invasive aquatic creatures. When non-native fish were stocked in the lake, particularly Pacific Ocean coho and chinook salmon, they grew into enormous, hard-fighting specimens that have been irresistible to anglers ever since.

Commercial fishing in its original form withered and has not recovered. Today, a few survivors of the fishing trade, mostly in the northern reaches of the lake, bring a small quantity of whitefish to market.

Though the once significant economic benefit of the old commercial fishing industry has been replaced by the sport fishing boom, Wisconsin has been made poorer in one way by the near-death of net fishing. The availability of fish brought to market once provided a food source that allowed everyone, not just sport fishers, as is the case today, to share in the lake’s bounty, but no more.

It’s time for that to start changing. There are encouraging signs that lake trout, a Lake Michigan native, has recovered to the point that its numbers are sustainable enough for net fishing. 

The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources tracks and manages fish populations in the Wisconsin waters of Lake Michigan and has the authority to allow net-fishing. The agency recently initiated a decision-making process that could end the current ban on commercial lake trout fishing. The process is slow and will take several years to arrive at a conclusion, but already organizations representing sportfishing interests are lining up against it.

Hook-and-line lake trout fishing is allowed and anglers have taken an average of 32,485 trout a year, according to the DNR. That is about 15,000 fewer than what the agency has determined is the safe-harvest limit for lake trout. Why shouldn’t some of these fish be made available to the public in markets and restaurants?

Lake trout were once considered by many to be the best-eating fish to come out of Lake Michigan. Planked lake trout was the premier menu item at the old Smith Bros. Fish Shanty restaurant in downtown Port Washington. Oddly, lake trout are not a popular catch for sport anglers, who sometimes disparage them as “greasers.”

Commercial lake trout fishing ended in the 1950s after the fish had been nearly wiped out by those deadly invaders, sea lamprey eels. The lamprey have since been controlled, and stocking has built up the lake trout population, which is now largely sustained by natural reproduction.

There is no good reason the fish can only be taken by recreational anglers. The sport fishing industry was created by fish-stocking programs managed by the DNR and now, by virtue of its economic power, it has significant influence over DNR fishing policies. It seems selfish to use that influence to deny net fishers and their customers access to a native Lake Michigan fish that is making a healthy comeback.